Slaiga is a card game with shooting, blocking, and lying. Play with caution.

​I will first discuss the rules of “Honest Slaiga,” the version of Slaiga with minimal lying.You have a draw pile and a discard pile. You have 6 cards in your hand. Each turn, you draw a card from either the top of the discard pile or the draw pile. You inspect that card, and then put one of your own cards on the discard pile. Your goal is to get a straight flush of 5 cards (so you can always have a card for doing other actions).If you think you know the suit of the flush that another player is trying to create, you can try to shoot them with a card of the following suit in the suit order that is also a “shoot card.” The suit order is alphabetical: clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades. A shoot card is a face card or an ace. So for instance if you suspect an opponent has three or more cards of spades, you could shoot her with a jack of clubs. To shoot, place the “shot” card face up near you and call, “[suit of opponent] target, [suit of card] shot.” If the other person does not have three or more cards of the target suit, they call “miss.” Then you choose one of your cards to give to the other player, and they place it somewhere in the draw deck (wherever they like).If they have three or more cards of the target suit, they can either concede and take a penalty or block the shot with a card of the next suit. If they concede, they give one of their cards to the attacking player to put somewhere in the draw deck. So if they were shot with a spade, they can throw a club down to block it and call “[suit of card] block.” The attacking player can then throw down a shot of the next suit to countershoot. The defending player can then counterblock with a card of the next suit. In theory this “volley” can continue until both players run out of cards, but the penalty for whoever is forced to concede goes up with each shoot and block pair. So if the attacking player does not have a card to counter shoot the first block, then he or she must concede and take a 1 card penalty (give one card to the opponent to put in the draw pile).If the attacking player or defending player cannot continue a volley, he or she must concede a take a card penalty equal to the number of shots in the volley. For example, if the defending player blocks a 3 shot volley and the attacking player can’t countershoot, he or she has to give 3 of his or her cards to the defending player and the defending player puts them somewhere in the draw deck.Any time a player takes a penalty, he or she draws cards (from either the draw deck or the discard pile (you can mix and match)) until he or she has 6 cards again (called “reloading”). Then, the turn returns to the player after the attacker as it normally would if the attacker drew.When a player has gotten a straight flush of 5 cards, he or she will place down his or her excess card (because you usually win after taking a card) facedown on the discard pile and says “slaiga.” The game continues for 2nd, 3rd, etc. places.

The other version of slaiga is base slaiga, which involves lying. The draw deck is face-up (to improve peoples’ knowledge of each other’s hands), and shots and blocks are face-down. Any player can lie about shots, blocks (by shooting or blocking with a card of the wrong suit), missing (calling miss when it’s not a miss), and winning (placing a face-down and calling a win when it’s not a win). All of these lies can be checked.If someone shoots you and you think they are shooting with a card that is not what they claim, you can call a “shot check,” in which they have to reveal the card. If the card is not what they claim, they have to take a n+1 card penalty, where n is the number of clashes in the volley (capping at 5 cards). If the card is what they claim, the person who calls the check takes a n card penalty. This is the same for “block checks” with blocks.If a player calls a miss, and the attacking player calls a miss check because he or she is suspicious, the defending player has to show his hand to the attacking player. If the defender was correct in calling a miss, the attacking player must discard 4 of his or her cards and place it somewhere in the deck. In addition, the defending player may look at the next 6 cards of the draw deck and switch up to 3 cards of the draw deck with 3 cards of his or her own hand (this switching is before the attacking player reloads). If the miss check was valid and the defending player did lie, the defending player is penalized 3 cards.A player may lie about winning by placing a card face-down when he or she does not have a straight flush of 5 cards. If an opponent calls a win check, the player must reveal his or her hand for all players to check the win state. If the player lied, he or she must discard his or her entire hand wherever into the draw deck he or she wants. If the player told the truth, whoever called the win check has to discard 4 of his or her cards into the deck.If the draw deck runs out, the discard pile is shuffled and used. At any time any player can look through the discard pile.BulletsBullets are cards Ace, King, Queen, Jack, and Jokers (optional). Each bullet has a special ability that can be activated if the person who uses them declares them so.The ace bullet serves to win volleys. If you shoot with an ace, the defending player must block with an ace. This is true for blocking with an ace as well.The king bullet when placed on the discard pile, allows the invoking player to look 6 cards ahead in the draw deck (or however many cards he or she wants). All players can see the cards that he or she looks through.The queen bullet allows the invoking player to choose a card among the 6 most recent cards of the discard pile (including the queen) to switch with one of the cards of his or her hand.The jack bullet is a bullet to shoot another player with in order to get one of their cards. If you shoot a player with a jack, you say “jack shot.” If the defending player has another bullet card, he or she may block the jack. The attacking player may continue the jack volley by counter shooting with another bullet card. Neither player can lie about these cards; hence they are placed face up in both versions of the game. The jack volley will end when one person concedes (either by choice, or because they do not have another bullet card. The person who won the jack volley gets to take a card from the loser’s hand (without looking at it) and switch it with one of his or her cards.The joker can negate all checks. If someone calls a check (such as a shot check) on a player with a joker, he or she may place a joker down face up to negate the check, so he or she does not have to turn over the card. The player then places the joker at the bottom of the deck and reloads one card. However, this only negates one check at a time. So if someone calls a win check on you, and you play a joker to negate them, someone else could call a win check on you, and you would need another joker to defend against that one.